According to a report, almost 55% of internet traffic comes from mobile devices in 2021 and it is expected to grow more in the forthcoming years. Today mobile users have outnumbered desktop users. As a result, bloggers and marketers are focused on mobile channels to deliver enhanced user experience and improve conversion rates through apps. 

Assuming you are in the process of developing a user-friendly app and end up developing a heavy-sized app or chances are you want to decrease the size of the app. It is always a good idea to reduce the app size. Google advises “the more lightweight the more chances of getting it being downloaded.” The heavyweight app may potentially cost you a huge number of customers not downloading your app. 

The smaller size, the better it is

There are multiple ways to prune app size among which optimization of images is what we will talk about in this article and let you know how you can reduce image size in your app. Marketing images have been powerful tools to attract users and deliver thoughts strongly may sometimes break things if not used appropriately. 

They say “first impression is the last impression”, considering your app size is the first impression. With your app getting larger in size, you might see a substantial loss in downloads. Chances are that your target users don’t have unlimited data and storage, even though today’s smartphones feature more storage and better processing power, users still prefer to go with lightweight apps. The smaller you can make your app, the better a smooth experience it provides. 

1. Find the right format for your project

High-quality images are often dropped to catch potential customers’ attraction but at the same time, they may slow down the speed of your app. Therefore, it is advisable to look upon high-resolution images. Here’s a guideline to help reduce app size through optimizing images on the app.

Decide on Image format: Android apps support JPEG, PNG, WebP and a new format has been added on the newer versions on Android phones. PNG images are a great option to use instead of JPEG as they are typically smaller than JPEG images. They offer lossless conversion, which means you can make your JPEG images lower in size without affecting their appearance. 

Developed in 2010, WebP format provides incredibly amazing image quality while producing much smaller images in size. On average, WebP images are 26% smaller than PNG images, and 25-34% smaller in size compared to JPEG. – Source

Whether it is an app or a blog, Google promotes users to use WebP images on their platform to reduce the size of the app/website which translates to a faster and lightweight app.

When you agree on the right format, you can reduce the size of images and transform them into your desired format with the online tools available such as TinyPNG, MozJpeg without losing their quality while truncating size.

2. Choose the right image dimension

Often people overlook this mistake while working on the app development project that doesn’t only affect the visual appearance (if not responsive) but also increases the load time. Let’s assume your user finds your products on an app that requires a container size of 600px*400px while you have put an oversized image 1000px by 8px. Putting a higher dimension than the required size will increase the load time and consume more data. This may result in a bad user experience, resulting in the un-installation of the app. 

3. Use Compression tools 

Even though you have desired format images in our inventory, it is advisable that you reduce the image size further with the help of compression tools that offer great command over the quality and size of images for different screen sizes. 

The purpose of compression is to remove all unnecessary data without compromising its quality. This process is called lossless compression. PNG and WebP images are examples of lossless compression. 

4. Adjust the Quality  

Playing with the perfect quality of images for the app can be exhausting. But with online tools and apps, you can have much greater command over the quality of images. You can adjust the photo according to your choice by adjusting the pixels and size of the image.

Each pixel an image contains takes a certain amount of space which means the higher the number of pixels, the bigger the size of the image. Many images processing comes up with the features of setting the quality of images by manipulating pixels, size, and format, etc. 

These tools enable us to reduce the size on the scale of 1-100 in which 100 represents the original quality. It is often recommended to reduce images by 25-30% in size which is generally not recognizable by human eyes. 

Choose the right format and leverage the right tool

Often developers end up getting confused in choosing the quality or size of an image. The quality of images puts your thoughts strongly in front of your audience and makes your application visually appealing. While the size of the image of images affects the overall performance of an application. Images are the major source that contributes to the size of apps.  

In this article, we have discussed how you can control your images and choose the best option for your app by choosing the appropriate format, right compression to tool the set the right pixels, quality, and size.

Image formats such as PNG for iOS and PNG/WebP for Android apps are great to choose from.  Also, you can find the right tools online or applications to eliminate the unnecessary metadata from an image (such as data, times, and other information an image may contain) to make it more lightweight. Along with the tools, you can find some amazing scripts that transform the images to an ideal size for all screens.

Conclusion

The high quality of images goes easy on the eye and undoubtedly attracts users while increasing the load time of the app which may cost you huge potential customer loss. When developing an android app, images are one of the important elements that highly contribute to the overall size of an app. 

Choosing the right format and size of images can eliminate the potential loss such as more load time, less smooth performance, bigger app size, etc.  

We hope you find this article helpful. We have walked through apps and tools to reduce the image size and also discussed the right format for your app. Images are not only accountable for the increase of app size there are various components, however, but they are common components that increase the size of apps drastically in major apps.